PAYDAY!!!!!!

August 2, 2013. 4:07pm.

SHIT!! It's August 2!!! You know what that means? My internship is more than halfway done...wow...shit. Yeah, that makes me kind of scared. And sad.

ANYWAY, WOOT WOOT!!!! So today's not actually payday - they all had payday about a week ago I think...and no, I did not get paid. (Don't worry, I knew that already - this is an unpaid internship.) HOWEVER, today WAS tips day - as in she gave the tips to everyone who works at the restaurant - and YES, me included. Cool huh? But for me, she gave me dollars too...and I'm pretty sure it's not instead of euros, but in addition to. So I got...$75 and  110. That comes out to $220 total!!! NOT BAD RIGHT?! I did the math. I've worked around 310 hours. And now I got $220. SOooOOOoooOOo my wage is a WHOPPING....

$0.71 PER HOUR!!!! WHOOOOO!!! :)

But no, in all seriousness I'm excited about getting my share of the tips :P

And I think more than my share actually because I am pretty sure that on Tibo's envelope it said  50. Which is weird, because that's less than just the amount I got in euros. Maybe that wasn't accurate. But whatever. Cool. :) Payday. Sweet. And of course I've been getting all my meals at the restaurant. Which vary in deliciousness. But are USUALLY really, really good. Not like...fancy and beautiful, like what we serve to clients - it's not like we care about presentation for the staff. But the food is damn good! Again, usually. Sometimes it's just something like a salad - a bunch of cut up vegetables in rice, pasta and something. And it's almost always quite simple. But very good. Entrecote, steak, lamb, salmon, merlu, shepherd's pie, etc as the main dish. Mashed potatoes, eggplant, pasta, salad, etc on the side. Every Sunday afternoon is mussels and fries day. On my first Sunday here I discovered that I like mussels...haha. I didn't know before! But yeah - the meats are often with a very yummy sauce, things are prepared well, blah blah. So meals are cool. I also haven't paid Nadia yet for staying here - I'm supposed to pay  200 a month I think. But the first month just ended, so it's not like it's super late - I guess I should give it to her soon.

Anyway. On to updates, my life, etc.

'La nouvelle' is here! (The new girl). Which is really cool actually!! Okay. Her name is Pauline. She's not actually 18, like Chef told me. She's 23. She's from Paris/has lived there her whole life. She's been in culinary school for one year. (She went to communications school or something like that before, but decided she wants to be a Chef. She did a 3 month internship as part of her first year. This internship is 6 months for her. So she's paid (a more than two month internship has to be paid in France). And it also counts towards her second year of culinary school. She's actually quite overweight. Which makes me nervous because she's in the kitchen the first week, but she goes with Tibo starting Tuesday. And...well, need I say more? No, probably not, I think you get the point, but maybe not to the full extent. When I told Tibo last week I think he's going to miss me he laughed and said, I don't think so...in an 'I'm definitely not' sort of way. Then I asked him again (after Pauline had arrived), during the little break when several staff members were around, and he said that depends... I brought up later on with him that he had a sudden change of heart. And he said, more or less, "it's not YOU I'll miss...it's the space in the patisserie." Oh no. And that's just the beginning. I haven't even gotten started on all of his butchering of her to me....so yes, I'm a little nervous.

However, she's really great! I like her a lot. OHH! PLUS she speaks English!! Like...really well!! Not fluently fluently...but really well, seriously. Like it's not hard at all to have conversations with her in English. I still try to speak mostly in French with her, but if I get caught on anything at all, it's not like our communication is blocked. And that's cool. Plus she can translate for me :) Teehee. We said we'd help each other learn French/English - because she wants to improve her English too.

Oh, I had a nice, long chat with Nadia last night after she got back from work. Like really nice and long. In English. It was my first time talking to long/much with her in English. Which was actually really good because I feel relieved to be able to be myself a little more - it's quite hard to be myself when I can't properly communicate. Although even to the others I think I've been much much more myself - I feel like everyone knows me a little better than before, and I'm more open than I was. Which is nice.

But my chat with Nadia: Well, I brought up how people don't hang out outside of work. And it turns out she really doesn't like that either! And it's not just me, it's not like everyone else does stuff and I'm not invited - the staff really just doesn't hang out together much. And that's NOT normal for a restaurant! Nadia was telling me at the other places she worked they always hung out after work on Friday and had drink together and talked. For a long time! Here...Saturday drinks after work is a thing I think...but it's for like 20 minutes! And as Nadia told me, the servers don't finish until a little later than the kitchen. And by the time they finish, the kitchen staff is all gone. They're always in such a rush to go, and exhausted my the day and not up for hanging out. Which she says is ridiculous because they're all young, they should have more energy! At her other restaurant she said they were open until later - they would close around 2am. And then everyone would hang out and have drinks until like 6am once a week!! And here - we get off before midnight on Saturdays, but everyone heads out within the half hour! UGH. She said it's really unfortunate that the scene here is so dead - there's one bar in Vernon that it all like 18 year old girls wearing barely anything, and there's another for 50 year olds basically. And both have shit music. So she says that definitely makes it less enticing for the staff to go out together. But she said they did once and it was a lot of fun - we agree, that if all the staff goes, it's us that can create the party/the atmosphere/the scene! But she said even then, people left much earlier than she thought they should have. So apparently there was a barbeque here at the house in June (before I came). (Nadia set it up, naturally.) It was fun and she said she hoped that people would then make more things like that happen. But nope. She said she's always telling the boys to go have fun, go drive to the beach (45 min-an hour away) for the weekend (our weekend: all Monday plus Tuesday until 6pm), but they rarely do anything - some of them finally went to the beach two weekends ago. But why not more often? Ugh. I would love to go to the beach with all of them!!

Anyway, like I said, Pauline is really nice! Aaaannnnndddd SHE'S from Paris, sooo...she 1) has interest in going back for weekends, 2) knows what to do in Paris, 3) has a flat with her parents, who are gone this week. Kristen is coming to visit me this Sunday for some amount of time (YAYYYYYYYY!!!!) and I wanted to go Paris with her already for my weekend...so I'm thinking now the three of us can go together, and Pauline said we can totally stay at her place!!!! This weekend is looking real promising :) The one annoying thing that worries me a little is transportation...getting to Paris from Vernon is easy - the train is just 45 minutes, and then once you get to Paris you can get EVERYWHERE by metro. Buuuut getting to Vernon is a pain. So we're going to have to get someone to drive us there...but it would be very much ideal to go in the morning, because...well, I want to spend a good amount of time in Paris! Hopefully Hallysone can drive us - the only thing is that she and Francesco tend to wake up really late... (Oh yeah, by they way, you remember Alison? She's the one who lives at the house and I was looking forward to being her friend at the beginning of my internship, and is dating Francesco. Well, her name is actually spelled Hallysone...yeah, weird huh??? Lol.)

Yoan is one of my favorite people at the restaurant. He's actually quite good at communicating with me and explaining things to me - one of the best. Even though he's the worst at English, was what he told me when I mentioned this to him today. Haha. Yeah, it's not like he translates things to English, he's just better at explaining, actually will slow down more to talk to me, knows how to use simpler words, etc. It actually reminds me of Taboo, when people try to explain things to me. And makes me realize that in fact I think they would all really suck at Taboo. I think that anyone in the family, for example, could explain everything they try to explain to me MUCH MUCH more effectively if you guys all spoke French. Or my friends for that matter. Honestly I think it's kind of an intelligence thing. Everyone in our family, and Adrienne and Julia are all really good at Taboo. Now that's not the only indicator of intelligence, I know, but it's definitely one kind of it, and the fact that we are very well educated definitely has added to that skillset I strongly believe. And I think that the people at the restaurant don't really have that skillset, and are probably not as highly educated in academic ways. Just a theory. But probably correct more or less.